Measuring the relative efficiency of banking industry has been a popular subject among both practitioners and academicians. Data envelopment analysis (DEA) has been widely applied for different purposes. This paper presents an empirical investigation to measure the relative efficiency of various banks located in province of Semnan, Iran. The proposed study uses DEA method to rank all units and using Anderson and Peterson method (1993) [Andersen, P., & Petersen, N. C. (1993). A procedure for ranking efficient units in data envelopment analysis. Management Science, 39, 1261-1264], we provide some super efficiency for inefficient units. The study also provides reference numbers for inefficient units and gives some target values for all inefficient units.

During the past few years, Tehran Stock Exchange (TSE) has been changed into one of the most popular places to invest and index has been quadrupled in fewer than three years. As a result, many people have been attracted to invest on TSE market. This paper presents an empirical investigation to study the effects of investors’ personal characteristics including financial management skills, wealth and financial intelligence on investors’ risk tolerance among 384 randomly chosen investors who were active on TSE market in city of Esfahan, Iran. Using structural equation modeling, the study has determined that financial management skills, wealth and financial intelligence influence positively on investors’ risk tolerance.

This paper studies the impacts of different factors influencing on perceived organization change in municipality organization in city of Tehran, Iran. The proposed study uses two questionnaires, one for measuring the effects of five factors including partnership, communication, training, believe in change and organization commitment and the other for organizational change in Likert scale. The study has been implemented among 147 regular employees of municipality organization in city of Tehran, Iran. Using simple regression analysis, the study has detected that all mentioned factors influence organizational change, positively. In addition, Freedman test indicates that partnership maintains the highest impact followed by believe in change, communication, organizational commitment and training.

This paper studies the impacts of four components of organizational culture on brand promise in one of Iranian producer of detergent and sanitary products. The proposed study uses two questionnaires, one for measuring the effects of organizational culture and the other for brand promise in Likert scale. Cronbach alphas for organizational culture and brand promise are calculated as 0.83 and 0.91, respectively. The study has been implemented among 211 regular customers of producer of detergent and sanitary products. Using Spearman correlation ratio as well as stepwise regression analysis, the study has detected that three components of organizational culture including tribal culture, entrepreneurial culture, and market culture influence positively on brand promise and bureaucratic culture influences negatively on brand promise.

This paper studies the relationship between dividend changes and future profitability of listed companies in Tehran Stock Exchange. Using the information of 191 companies, the study has implemented some regression techniques. The results of the research model analysis indicate that the changes in dividend contain significant and important information content, for the future profitability and dividend changes, and have an important and positive impact on the future profitability of the company. The results also show that changes in dividend can improve the company & apos; s future performances and messages to recovery the activities and future performance of the company. However, the results have shown the greatest impact on the performance of the dividend changes, for a year after considered year and not for two years after. In other words, the information content of dividend changes are more about the performance of the next year and the information provided is lower in the next two years.

The increase in the number of universities for the last decade in Iran increases the need for higher education institutions to manage their enrollment, more effectively. The purpose of this study is to design a model to improve the first year university student adjustment by examining the effects of academic self-efficacy, academic motivation, satisfaction, high school GPA and demographic variables on student’s adjustment to university. The study selects a sample of 357 students out of 4585 bachelor first year student who were enrolled in different programs. Three questionnaires were used for collection of data for this study, namely academic self-efficacy, academic motivation and student satisfaction with university. Structural equation modeling was employed using AMOS version7.16 to test the adequacy of the hypothesized model. Inclusion of additional relationship in the initial model improved the goodness indices considerably. The results suggest that academic self-efficacy were related positively to adjustment, both directly (B=0.35) and indirectly through student satisfaction (B=0.14) and academic motivation (B=0.9). The results indicate a need to develop programs that effectively promote the self-efficacy of first year student of student to increase college adjustment and consequently retention rate.

This paper examines the relationship between quality of life and mental health among regular employee who work for Esfahan Steel Company, Iran. The study uses two questionnaires, one for measuring quality of life, which is adopted from Goldberg and Williams (2000) [Goldberg, D., & Williams, P. (2000). General health questionnaire (GHQ). Swindon, Wiltshire, UK: NFER Nelson.]. In addition, the study uses another questionnaire, which is adopted from Juniper et al. (1994) [Juniper, E. F., Guyatt, G. H., Willan, A., & Griffith, L. E. (1994). Determining a minimal important change in a disease-specific quality of life questionnaire. Journal of clinical epidemiology, 47(1), 81-87.]. Using Pearson correlation ratio as well as stepwise regression technique, the study has determined a positive and meaningful relationship between quality of life and mental health care.

The novel funding sources turn out to be important for the Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) sector all over the world especially after 2007-2008 world financial crisis. Thus, to develop a new business idea and start-ups, SMEs need a sufficient amount of capital. However, after the financial crisis in 2008, SME sector faced the challenges of attracting new capital. Therefore, an innovative method of fundraising for SME was introduced as crowdfunding. Crowdfunding indicates financing a project or an idea via the internet owing the help from the many investors or donors of a society. Since there are limited works about the influence of Crowdfunding on Entrepreneur Self-efficacy (ESE), hence, to minimize the research gap and to achieve the objective of the study, we conduct a quantitative research among 190 entrepreneurs in Bangladesh using crowdfunding based on Social Cognitive theory. The data were analyzed using Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) in IBM-SPSS-Amos 25.0 and the stated hypotheses were tested. The study found a direct and positive effect of Crowdfunding on Entrepreneur’s Self-efficacy (β=0.924, P=.001). Overall, the result has landed support for crowdfunding, which indicates that it can influence on self-efficacy of entrepreneur. In order to determine the need of crowdfunding, we have explained and statistically demonstrated how crowdfunding can provide a supplementary channel where firms can gain finance and to create self-efficacy of entrepreneurs through exploiting the potential of internet.

Novel 1,5-benzothiazepin-4-(5H)-one derivatives (8a-8g) have been synthesized by intramolecular cyclization of 6 using propyl phosphonic anhydride (T3P) as a cyclodehydrating agent. The anti-angiogenic and anti-oxidant properties of the new derivatives were then evaluated. Compounds 8b, 8d, 8e, 8f and 8g exhibited very good inhibition of capillary proliferation, thus proving their anti-angiogenic properties. In addition, the in vitro antioxidant activities of these compounds were evaluated using diphenyl picryl hydrazine (DPPH), OH-, metal ion-chelating and NO (nitric oxide) assays, and the results compared with butylated hydroxytoluene (BHT), a well known anti-oxidant. Compounds 8a-8g showed excellent free-radical scavenging activities in the metal ion-chelating assay, and compounds 8f and 8g showed nitric oxide radical scavenging properties at a concentration of 20-100 µg/mL, and are thus more potent than BHT.

Although several prior research projects have focused on the factors that impact on the adoption of information technology, there are limited empirical research works that simultaneously capture technology factors (UTAUT2) and customer specific factors (perceived technology security and intention to recommend) helping users adopt internet banking. Thus, the current study aims to develop an integrated technology adoption model with extended UTAUT model and perceived technology security to predict and explain user’s intention to adopt internet banking and intention to recommend internet banking in social networks. A quantitative approach based survey was conducted to collect the data from 398 internet banking users. For statistical analysis, structural equation model (SEM) approach was used. Convergence and divergence with earlier findings were found, confirming that performance expectancy, effort expectancy, social influence, hedonic motivation and perceived technology security had significant influence on user’s intention to adopt internet banking. Additionally, IPMA analysis show that among all constructs hedonic motivation and perceived technology security had the highest impact on user’s intention to adopt internet banking. For researcher, this study provides a basis for further refinement of technology adoption model while for practitioner improving security factor (perceived technology security) may turn users towards adoption of internet banking.